Rode VideoMicro on a6300 - worth buying?

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dylansmith

Well-known member
I'm a 1-man show and shoot my running kids for leisure (yeah, i know having a lav attached close to source is the best, but not practical for kids).

Will using the rode videomicro be a significant improvement over the a6300 internal mic? I have only seen ONE review so far and it was done indoors.

I'm actually looking for something that has far more narrow sound capture, but the videomic Pro is too big and defeats the size advantage of my a6300. If you have other smaller capsule designs to recommend, please feel free.

All suggestions welcome!
 
Basically you get narrow with length. If the Rode VMP is "too big" then? That is NOT a big mic. Yes it's going to do better than the built in mics, almost by definition. You might either borrow one or try out a Takstar (similar but MUCH cheaper) to see if it's worth it. It doesn't sound like you are going to anything like close enough to get more than just general ambiance, so if you are thinking you are going to get clean dialog at 50 feet save you money because it's not going to happen.
 
actually most of the time i'll be 3 feet away (or less) - hence a shotgun mic would be quite usable in that sense.

just wanted to know how much of an improvement a videomicro will make over the internal mics (since the a6300 mic is rather decent)
 
dylansmith said:
actually most of the time i'll be 3 feet away (or less) - hence a shotgun mic would be quite usable in that sense.
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That's still not going to work as well as you think. Quality of recorded sound, especially dialog, is certainly dependent on proximity of the mic but also to proper choice and application of mic pattern. A shotgun mic needs to be within 20", not 36", to be most effective. Further, a camera-top shotgun pointed straight at the source is also going to "hear" everything behind the source. A shotgun needs, ideally, to be boomed from above and aimed down toward the source.

As Scott pointed out, the VideoMicro is a cardioid mic and does not have the wide rejection of a shotgun. As a cardioid mounted on your camera, it's going to hear an awful lot more than a shotgun, such as sound sources off to the sides. A camera-mounted mic also picks up sounds of the camera and camera's operator. And because the cardioid response pattern is so much wider, it actually needs to be closer to the source than a shotgun would in order to acheive the appropriate ratio of dialog to background sounds.

dylansmith said:
just wanted to know how much of an improvement a videomicro will make over the internal mics (since the a6300 mic is rather decent)
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It'll be an improvement only in the sense that there is no internal (pinhole) camera mic out there that is worth a flip. I'm not sure I would call any of them "rather decent" simply because the physics of sound pretty much render them useless for all but the scratchiest of scratch audio. The VideoMicro will get the mic out of the camera for recording nats and better scratch tracks, and give it some shock isolation from camera handling sounds, and make it much easier to add things like wind protection, but that's about where the improvements will stop.
 
I will have to say that I was quite surprised at how not awful the built in mics on a T2i were for general ambientish BRoll sound. I got a Trakstar for the camera and it is noticeably better but the stuff I got playing around with the internal mics was not as awful as I thought it would be.

That said I was only doing B roll kinds of shots and It would have been awful for dialog.

I think the Rode and Trakstar are hypers, not cardioids, so not quite as wide. Both are also designed for camera mount and neither picks up as much camera noise as camera mounted mics are known for. With the Trakstar that is partially because it rolls off a lot of the lows.

The pros:

Better sound than the built in mics, more directional, internal mic pre sends a hotter/ quieter signal to the camera, easy/ convenient for OMB shots.

The Cons:

The are camera mounted so they are never positioned correctly (almost always too far away and not aimed as they should be). They are still really small diaphragm mics and that inherently makes them a bit noisier than a standard small diaphragm mic. They are not the best pattern for the distance they are typically used at. They will pick up some operator/ camera noise.

What I find them good for is a "better" camera sound to use for syncing dual system. Shooting B Roll where you may not use the sound anyway. OMB shoots where you may be doing an interview and can either set the mic on a stand or can get pretty close. And anything where for logistics reasons you would otherwise be stuck using the built in mics.

What they are not good for is narrative film dialog, pretty much with out exception even if boom mounted. Anything where the sound you are capturing is going to be your prime sound. The sound bar tends to be fairly low on documentaries and "news", so you might get by in those genres with this is your prime audio. But it's a second best choice at best.

Because of the limitations I have a hard time springing a couple of hundred on one of these mics. They are still really made for the home market and are neither durable enough nor sound good enough for professional applications (other than B Roll or a better guide track). For that money you are in the zone of affordable professional mics.

So for the price of a VMP you could get an AT875R which is going to be a lot more usable. You are going to have to get some extras to feed that into the camera, but it's a better mic that you can use for dual system down the road. Which is why I bring up the Trackstar in these threads. Not because it's a great mic but it's close to the VMP and at $30 or less it is in my price point for a mic with such limited uses. I'm sure the VMP sounds better and probably has a better build but even if it was a lot better you are still getting a golf cart. It might be a golf cart built by Lamborghini, but in the end it's a golf cart, useful but why pay for a Lamborghini that can't go over 15 MPH?.
 
Noiz2 said:
I think the Rode and Trakstar are hypers, not cardioids...
Click to expand...

The RØDE VideoMicro is definitely a cardioid (see specs from RØDE HERE). The Takstar is not one I'm familiar with, but looking for specs on it is a bit tricky. Most of the product descritptions I've found are either sparse or disjointed (broken English)... if that's even the same Takstar model you're talking about, which is billed as a shotgun and does seem to have an interference tube design under the foam cover.
 
Well actually I was talking about the VMP which by this description from the Rode site is a "true shotgun".

But really the bottom line is that neither is long enough to much of a shotgun, but both are a lot more directional than the "pin hole" omni built into a DSLR.

They are a step in the right direction but you aint gettin no Schoeps, or even an NTG2.
 
interesting discussion, and thanks for the knowledge contributed so far.

Given my limitations (can't boom with a 1-man show, and can't attach lavs to babies), I can only use shotgun mics that are camera-mounted. Being well-aware of the disadvantages, is there any alternative compared to a VMP that has even MORE side rejection (i.e. narrow field) and better quality than the VMP?

Don't mind paying more, since I have no choice but to use camera-mounted mics.

I checked out some reviews of the NTG2 vs VMP, and the latter seems to have better low frequency response than NTG2. When equalized, they sound about the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCGQGfYGkrc
 
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